Mr. President, the time has come for the American people to be told the blunt truth about Indochina.

I am reluctant to make any statement which may be misinterpreted as unappreciative of the gallant French struggle at Dien Bien Phu and elsewhere; or as partisan criticism of our Secretary of State just prior to his participation in the delicate deliberations in Geneva. Nor, as one who is not a member of those committees of the Congress which have been briefed--if not consulted--on this matter, do I wish to appear impetuous or alarmist in my evaluation of the situation.

But to pour money, material, and men into the jungles of Indochina without at least a remote prospect of victory would be dangerously futile and self-destructive. Of course, all discussion of “united action” assumes the inevitability of such victory; but such assumptions are not unlike similar predictions of confidence which have lulled the American people for many years and which, if continued, would present an improper basis for determining the extent of American participation.

Despite this series of optimistic reports about eventual victory, every member of the Senate knows that such victory today appears to be desperately remote, to say the least, despite tremendous amounts of economic and materiel aid from the United States, and despite a deplorable loss of French Union manpower. The call for either negotiations or additional participation by other nations underscores the remoteness of such a final victory today, regardless of the outcome at Dien Bien Phu. It is, of course, for these reasons that many French are reluctant to continue the struggle without greater assistance; for to record the sapping effect which time and the enemy have had on their will and strength in that area is not to disparage their valor. If “united action” can achieve the necessary victory over the forces of communism, and thus preserve the security and freedom of all Southeast Asia, then such united action is clearly called for. But if, on the other hand, the increase in our aid and the utilization of our troops would only result in further statements of confidence without ultimate victory over aggression, then now is the time when we must evaluate the conditions under which that pledge is made.

I am frankly of the belief that no amount of American military assistance in Indochina can conquer an enemy which is everywhere and at the same time nowhere, “an enemy of the people” which has the sympathy and covert support of the people.

Moreover, without political independence for the Associated States, the other Asiatic nations have made it clear that they regard this as a war of colonialism; and the “united action” which is said to be so desperately needed for victory in that area is likely to end up as unilateral action by our own country. Such intervention, without participation by the armed forces of the other nations of Asia, without the support of the great masses of the people of the Associated States, with increasing reluctance and discouragement on the part of the French--and, I might add, with hordes of Chinese Communist troops poised just across the border in anticipation of our unilateral entry into their kind of battleground--such intervention, Mr. President, would be virtually impossible in the type of military situation which prevails in Indochina.

This is not a new point, of course. In November of 1951, I reported upon my return from the Far East as follows:

“In Indochina we have allied ourselves to the desperate effort of a French regime to hang on to the remnants of empire. There is no broad, general support of the native Vietnam government among the people of that area. To check the southern drive of communism makes sense but not only through reliance on the force of arms. The task is rather to build strong native non-Communist sentiment within these areas and rely on that as a spearhead of defense rather than upon the legions of General de Lattre. To do this apart from and in defiance of innately nationalistic aims spells foredoomed failure.”

In June of last year, I sought an amendment to the Mutual Security Act which would have provided for the distribution of American aid, to the extent feasible, in such a way as to encourage the freedom and independence desired by the people of the Associated States My amendment was soundly defeated on the grounds that we should not pressure France into taking action on this delicate situation; and that the new French government could be expected to make “a decision which would obviate the necessity of this kind of amendment or resolution.” The distinguished majority leader [Mr. Knowland] assured us that “We will all work, in conjunction with our great ally, France, toward the freedom of the people of those states.”

Every year we are given three sets of assurances: First, that the independence of the Associated States is now complete; second, that the independence of the Associated States will soon be completed under steps “now” being undertaken; and, third, that military victory for the French Union forces in Indochina is assured, or is just around the corner, or lies two years off. But the stringent limitations upon the status of the Associated States as sovereign states remain; and the fact that military victory has not yet been achieved is largely the result of these limitations. Repeated failure of these prophecies has, however, in no way diminished the frequency of their reiteration, and they have caused this nation to delay definitive action until now the opportunity for any desirable solution may well be past.

It is time, therefore, for us to face the stark reality of the difficult situation before us without the false hopes which predictions of military victory and assurances of complete independence have given us in the past. The hard truth of the matter is, first, that without the wholehearted support of the peoples of the Associated States, without a reliable and crusading native army with a dependable officer corps, a military victory, even with American support, in that area is difficult if not impossible, of achievement; and, second, that the support of the people of that area cannot be obtained without a change in the contractual relationships which presently exist between the Associated States and the French Union.

If the French persist in their refusal to grant the legitimate independence and freedom desired by the peoples of the Associated States; and if those peoples and the other peoples of Asia remain aloof from the conflict, as they have in the past, then it is my hope that Secretary Dulles, before pledging our assistance at Geneva, will recognize the futility of channeling American men and machines into that hopeless internecine struggle.

The facts and alternatives before us are unpleasant, Mr. President. But in a nation such as ours, it is only through the fullest and frankest appreciation of such facts and alternatives that any foreign policy can be effectively maintained. In an era of supersonic attack and atomic retaliation, extended public debate and education are of no avail, once such a policy must be implemented. The time to study, to doubt, to review, and revise is now, for upon our decisions now may well rest the peace and security of the world, and, indeed, the very continued existence of mankind. And if we cannot entrust this decision to the people, then, as Thomas Jefferson once said: “If we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion by education.”

Logged

All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately

The facts and alternatives before us are unpleasant, Mr. President. But in a nation such as ours, it is only through the fullest and frankest appreciation of such facts and alternatives that any foreign policy can be effectively maintained. In an era of supersonic attack and atomic retaliation, extended public debate and education are of no avail, once such a policy must be implemented. The time to study, to doubt, to review, and revise is now, for upon our decisions now may well rest the peace and security of the world, and, indeed, the very continued existence of mankind. And if we cannot entrust this decision to the people, then, as Thomas Jefferson once said: “If we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion by education.”

Boy, they sure haven't learned anything in 57 years. They are still meddling in things that they shouldn't meddle in and not studying things out before they act. WE ARE RUN BY WAR-HAPPY PSYCHOPATHIC MORONS.

Logged

I'M A DEPLORABLE KNUCKLEHEAD THAT SUPPORTS PRESIDENT TRUMP. MAY GOD BLESS HIM AND KEEP HIM SAFE.

They originally wanted the UN Building on the west coast at Moraga - I'm trying to remember who owned all the land back then, it was Standard Oil = Rockefeller )

Moraga now has many gated communities and many Government types living there....Update - No it was a Standard Oil Crony Donald Rheem , so yes Rockefeller owned the Moraga California - UN intended Land.....

http://www.wjasper.com/Moragahistory.htmlMoraga's History...While the Moraga Land Association, Hooper and lastly the Moraga Company had been actively buying and developing most of the rancho over all these years, the only parcel that Carpentier never owned, the Williams parcel, had undergone a number of changes. It had changed hands twice -- first to the Lucas family and then to two young women who had a proposed residence for homeless children built upon it.

It was purchased in 1934 by Donald Rheem, the son of a former President of Standard Oil of California. He added to the estate and ultimately bought 1,650 acres of rancho land which he developed into the Rheem center in 1954 and surrounding subdivisions. The estate, now known as the Hacienda de las Flores, was bought by the Christian Brothers in 1961, the Moraga Park and Recreation Authority in 1973, and the Town of Moraga in 1977.

John F. Kennedy attended the San Francisco conference at which fifty founding ... plus Poland — signed the Charter of the United Nations on June 26, 1945

http://www.buzzle.com/articles/facts-about-john-f-kennedy.htmlInteresting Facts About John F Kennedy... An author before being elected President, he wrote the book 'Profiles in Courage' for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. JFK, an avid reader, was a big fan of James Bond and read Ian Fleming's books. ... . After he retired from the military service as a full lieutenant in March 1945, he worked for a newspaper for several months writing about the United Nations Conference on International Organization in San Francisco, the Potsdam Conference and the British elections of 1945.

The Sequoia Seminars - 1954 - LSD Therapy - Historyhttp://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKmeyerC.htmMary and Cord Meyer on their wedding day (1945)Cord Meyer...On 21st July, 1944, a Japanese grenade was thrown into his foxhole. He was so badly injured that when he was found he was initially declared to be dead. In fact, his commanding officer sent a telegram to his parents announcing he had died. Although he lost his left eye he was eventually well enough to be sent home. Soon afterwards his twin brother, Quentin, was killed at Okinawa.

While recovered in New York City Meyer met the journalist, Mary Pinchot. The couple married on 19th April, 1945. The couple then went to San Francisco to attend the conference that established the United Nations. Cord went as an aide to Harold Stassen, whereas Mary, who was working for the North American Newspaper Alliance at the time, was one of the reporters sent to cover this important event.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheem,_CaliforniaRheem (also, Rheem Valley[1] and Rheem Center[2]) is an unincorporated community in Contra Costa County, California. It is located 7.5 miles (12 km) north-northwest of Danville,[2] at an elevation of 587 feet (179 m).

The place was named after its developer, Donald I. Rheem, the son of William Rheem, President of Standard Oil Company

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_RheemWilliam S. Rheem (1862 – April 19, 1919[1]), aka W.S. Rheem, was an important civic figure in the politics of early Richmond, California in addition to being president of Standard Oil.[1]...Rheem arrived in Richmond after finding a spot for a new refinery to replace an existing and unexpandable location in Alameda.[2] He picked a spot in the Point Richmond District along the Potrero Hills and the Marshlands

Rolling Thunder - Cambodian supply depots off limits - SOVIETSA-2 SAM sites shot down 115 american planes"We were restrained to carrying out a campaign which seemed designed NOT to win" because RUSSIAN technicians might be killed.McNamara did not allow pilots to attack any installation where MIG's were based.

Soviet SA-2 SAM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-75_DvinaThe S-75 Dvina (Russian: С-75; NATO reporting name SA-2 Guideline) is a Soviet-designed, high-altitude, command guided, surface-to-air missile (SAM) system. Since its first deployment in 1957, it has become the most widely-deployed and -used air defense missile in history

This system first gained fame when an S-75 battery shot down a U-2 overflying the Soviet Union in 1960. Later, North Vietnamese forces used the S-75 extensively during the Vietnam War to defend Hanoi and Haiphong...In 1965 North Vietnam asked for some assistance against the US's airpower, which they were essentially defenseless against at the time. After some discussion it was agreed to supply the PAVN with the S-75. The decision was not made lightly, because it greatly increased the chances that one would fall into US hands for study. Site preparation started early in the year, and the US detected the program almost immediately on April 5, 1965. While military planners pressed for the sites to be attacked before they could become operational, their political leaders refused, fearing that Soviet technical staff might be killed.[citation needed]

On July 24, 1965, a USAF F-4C aircraft was shot down by an SA-2.[3] Three days later, the US responded with Operation Iron Hand to attack the other sites before they could become operational. Most of the S-75 were deployed around the Hanoi-Haiphong area and were off-limits to attack (as were local airfields) for political reasons. President Lyndon Johnson announced on public TV that one of the other sites would be attacked the next week. The Vietnamese removed the missiles and replaced them with decoys, while moving every available anti-aircraft gun into the approach routes. The tactic worked, causing American casualties.

http://www.vnafmamn.com/Valiant_Anloc.html It should be noticed that the ARVN ground forces at An Loc have been armed with the "humble" M-72s (no good for firing at Soviet heavy battle Tanks, it works only when firing at the right spot and with luck) and home-made, modified anti-tank "mines." Why? Because at this difficult phase of Vietnam war, Uncle Sam was in the process of pulling out. No more Yankee ground troops around, but only the advisory teams. And now, brace yourselves, you are descending into hell: Battle of An Loc. April 1972

Flight Training, Pensacola '37-'38. USS Enterprise, Scouting Squadron 6. '42 deployed to Pacific as XO (VC-11) flying F4F (Wildcats). Led flight of 54 from Fiji to Guadalcanal to re-enforce Marine Corps. He served there as leader of the Navy Fighter Group. '43 formed VF-32 as CO. Deployed on USS Langley . April 29, '44, he led a flight of 8 Hellcats on a pre-dawn fighter sweep over Truk atoll; at dawn sighted a flight of aout 36 Japanese Zeroes flying at 10,000 ft in column of V's; first pass his flight flamed 8; then, exercising perfect discipline "Holly" Hills (4 kills) led his division to "high cover" where they accounted for seven of the enemy. Cdr. Outlaw shot down 5 and 1 probable, fellow Ace, Dick May got 3 and Outlaw's wingman 4. Total for this brief action was 22 victories and 6 probables.

The action took place in less than ten minutes and was declared by COMNAVAIRPAC to be "a perfect example of air combat and air discipline."

Subsequently, he served three times in Pentagon; as CO of USS Duxbury Bay and USS Intrepid; as CO Air Group Six (Coral Sea); CO Heavy Attack Squadron five (NucWpns).Selected to rank of Rear Admiral and served as Commander Naval Aviation Safety Center; Commander Carrier Division One and Task Force 77 of Vietnam '64-'65 where he directed first sustained attacks; Commander CARDIVS 16 and 20 and Commander Hunter-Killer Force, Atlantic Fleet.

His last assignment was as Commander Fleet Aircraft Mediterranean/CTF-67/ and Maritime Air Mediterranean (a NATO orgnization of which he was the first commander). Decorations: Navy Cross, Legion of Merit (3), DFC (3)

1964-1974 (North Vietnam)...The North Vietnamese Air Force (NVAF) received its first jet fighter aircraft, the MiG-17 in February 1964, but they were initially stationed at air bases in Communist China, while their pilots were being trained. On February 3, 1964, the first fighter regiment No. 921 "Sao Do" was formed (Trung Đoàn Không Quân Tiêm Kích 921), and on August 6 it arrived from China in North Vietnam with its MiG-17s.[2] On September 7, the No. 923 fighter regiment "Yen The", led by Lt. Binh Bui, was formed. In May 1965, No. 929 bomber squadron (Đại Đội Không Quân Ném Bom 929) was formed with Il-28 twin engine bombers. Only one Il-28 sortie was flown in 1972 against Laotian forces.

The North Vietnamese Air Force's first jet air-to-air engagement with U.S. aircraft was on April 3, 1965. The NVAF claimed the shooting down of one US Navy F-8 Crusader, which was not confirmed by US sources, although they acknowledged having encountered MiGs.[2] Consequently, April 3 became "North Vietnamese Air Force Day". On April 4 the VPAF (NVAF) scored the first confirmed victories to be acknowledged by both sides. The US fighter community was shocked when relatively slow, post-Korean era MiG-17 fighters shot down advanced F-105 Thunderchief fighters-bombers attacking the Thanh Hoa Bridge. The two downed F-105s were carrying their normal heavy bomb load, and were not able to react to their attackers.[2]

In 1965, the NVAF were supplied with supersonic MiG-21s by the USSR which were used for high speed GCI controlled hit and run intercepts against USAF strike groups. The MiG-21 tactics became so effective, that by late 1966, an operation was mounted to especially deal with the MiG-21 threat. Led by Colonel Robin Olds on January 2, 1967, Operation Bolo lured MiG-21s into the air, thinking they were intercepting a F-105 strike group, but instead found a sky full of missile armed F-4 Phantom II Phantoms set for aerial combat. The result was a loss of almost half the inventory of MiG-21 interceptors, at a cost of no US losses. The VPAF (NVAF) stood down for additional training after this setback.

“In Korea we have direct killing of Americans with Soviet weapons. The American casualty roll in the Korean War was 33,730 killed and 103,284 wounded… The 130,000-man North Korean Army, which crossed the South Korean border in June 1950, was trained, supported, and equipped by the Soviet Union, and included a brigade of Soviet T-34 medium tanks (with U.S. Christie suspensions). The artillery tractors were direct metric copies of Caterpillar tractors. The trucks came from the Henry Ford-Gorki plant or the ZIL plant. The North Korean Air Force has 180 Yak planes built in plants with U.S. Lend-Lease equipment. These Yaks were later replaced by MiG-15s powered by Russian copies of Rolls-Royce jet engines sold to the Soviet Union in 1947.”...“Who were the government officials responsible for this transfer of known military technology? The concept originally came from National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, who reportedly sold President Nixon on the idea that giving military techno­logy to the Soviets would temper their global territorial ambitions. How Henry arrived at this gigantic non sequitur is not known. Sufficient to state that he aroused considerable concern over his motivations. Not least that Henry [Ford] had been a paid family employee of the Rockefellers since 1958 and has served as International Advisory Committee Chairman of the Chase Manhattan Bank, a Rockefeller concern.”

“Some years ago research strongly suggested that the Soviets had no indigenous military transport technology: neither motor vehicles nor marine diesel engines. Yet about 80 percent of the weapons and supplies for the North Vietnamese were transported by some means from the Soviet Union. The greater part of these Soviet weapons went to Vietnam by Soviet freighter and then along the Ho Chi Minh trail on Soviet-built trucks…

RPG-7 HistorySoviet RPG-7 (or Chicom copy Type-69)was a common multi-purpose heavy weapon system for NVA and Vietcong who used it in direct firesupport, anti-armour, anti-helicopter and bunker busting roles.

Soviet RPG-7 was used by VC and NVA from 1967 onwards and was particularly effective against aluminum hullled M113 APCs. It's main role was, however, anti-personnel. Easy-to-use, lightweight and powerful RPG-7 and it's variants are still used world-wide.

All of these weapons were 40mm and capable of penetrating up to 6" of armour at ranges of 100 - 500 meters. Sights consisted of simple iron sights or optional more sophisticated range finding optical sight.

Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty: For he maketh sore, and bindeth up: he woundeth, and his hands make whole ; He shall deliver thee in six troubles: yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee. - Job 5

Mig-17 / NVAF - This deadly Russian fighter earned the respect of U.S. pilots in the war-torn skies over Vietnam. Flown by North Vietnamese pilots, the MiG-17 boasted excellent maneuverability and a heavy cannon armament.

http://avstop.com/news/sv2.htmlMIKOYAN-GUREVICH MIG-21F "FISHBED" ... So, Rolling Thunder began again and U.S. aircrews not only had to attack the new targets, but also those they had already destroyed which had been rebuilt or repaired. On Sep. 3, 1966, North Vietnam sent up its MiG-21s in force for the first time from five air bases which had not previously been attacked because of U.S. policy. By the end of the year, Rolling Thunder had progressed northward, reaching the Hanoi area.

http://www.probertencyclopaedia.com/browse/FYS.HTMIt was later observed in action in Vietnam where it met with more success. The SA-7 is a 9.2 kg missile powered by a solid fuel, three-stage rocket motor and guided by a passive infra-red guidance system

Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty: For he maketh sore, and bindeth up: he woundeth, and his hands make whole ; He shall deliver thee in six troubles: yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee. - Job 5

Without the material support from the Soviets the Vietnam war would have been over in a year, instead the ships continued into Haiphong harbour for the next ten years till "they" decided that the U.S.A. had been beaten into submission .... Years later the Soviets would get the same treatment in Afghanistan.... Making China relatively stronger (with the tech transfers for ICBM's from Loral Corp...) so that today China appears the military equal to the U.S.A. ....

Notice here also how they always include China with the Soviets like it was equal amounts, when 90 percent of the war materials were from the Soviets.I have tried to document the amount of real support China gave to Vietnam and it seems to boil down to the "threat" of their troops pouring south like they did in Korea....

During the Vietnam War Large volumes of military supplies from the Soviet Union and the Peoples Republic of China arrived through Haiphong...Both LBJ and Nixon refused to mine Haiphong Harbor ... [ that would end the material supply line from the Soviets] ... .... USA risked injuring Soviet or Chinese civilians AND Miltary personnel.....

the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor to CIA, had sent agents into China during WWII.

Among many other things, while there, they befriended a Vietnamese communist guerrilla, Ho Chi Minh. Ho became a strong ally of the US in the fight against the Japanese,

and against the French Vichy government that was running Indochina. Indeed, Ho's Viet Minh army was helping downed US pilots in Indochina.

...In 1945, President Truman gave France his approval to resume colonial authority over Indochina. The Japanese had thrown the French out in 1945. But, the Japanese surrendered in September 1945. Ho declared independence.

French prisoners being marched by Viet Minh out of Dien Bien Phu, May 7, 1954.

Logged

Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty: For he maketh sore, and bindeth up: he woundeth, and his hands make whole ; He shall deliver thee in six troubles: yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee. - Job 5

Is this exposing that the French Wars in Vietnam were created by the Vichy Government which was a puppet to the German Nazis? And that the continued invasion in 1946 post WWII was likely instigated by the same Vichy remnants? And that the whole "communist" bullshit domino theory was likely a General Gehlen style plot to engage in more wars now using the United States as the Nazi Proxy? And that this would fit in with Prescott Bush, Richard Nixon, Harriman, Rockefeller, and the other American Nazis efforts to continue WWII fascist wars of deception for continued theft and destruction of the Republic?

WE WENT TO F*CKING VIETNAM TO CONTINUE A NAZI/VICHY F*CKING EUGENICS GENOCIDE?!?!?!?

IT WAS RUN AS A NAZI WAR, BURNING VILLAGES, NAPALMING CIVILIANS, FUTURE WEAPONS TESTING, CORPORATISM IN WARFARE, PHOENIX PROJECT, CONTINUAL DECEPTION TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE!

M*THER ^(u%(%)(*^&_&_+)(!!!!!!!!!

I guess now we are continuing Rommel's work in North Africa!

Logged

All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately

Of all the advisors that graced the West Wing of the White House during the John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson years, Walt Whitman Rostow was, according to author David Milne, the truest and most fervent hawk. He was also a reverent Cold War ideologue who believed in the power of the U.S. military in spreading American-style democracy. Milne, a lecturer in American politics and foreign policy at the University of East Anglia, casts longtime national security advisor to JFK and LBJ, Walt Rostow, as a man of great intellect and powerful persuasiveness who was able to gain the ear of his boss, the president of the United States, particularly LBJ. Because of this, Rostow had his version of how to counter the Soviet Union, defeat the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, and win the war in Vietnam implemented. In the insightful America’s Rasputin, Milne explains Rostow's diplomatic and military ideology when it came to fighting communism around the world, particularly in the third world, and lays at his feet much of the direct responsibility for the U.S. debacle in Southeast Asia..

America’s Rasputin is essentially a brief biography of Rostow that traces his roots from Flatbush, Brooklyn, New York to Washington, D.C. The book is organized into eight chapters and an epilogue, and presents a chronological rendering of Rostow's life. The majority of the book is dedicated to his Washington and White House years, first as Kennedy's deputy assistant for national security affairs (1961-62), and then as Johnson's national security advisor from 1966 to 1969 (replacing McGeorge Bundy and Robert Komer). In between, Rostow did time as a member of the State Department's Policy Planning Council, but still had immediate access to the president.

The title of Milne's book comes from a comment made about Rostow by Averell Harriman, one of America's most celebrated diplomats. Harriman described Rostow as "America's Rasputin," comparing him to the Russian mystic who advised Russian czar Nicholas II, for the powerful and sometimes unsavory influence Rostow exerted on JFK and LBJ's presidential decision making. Despite this label, Rostow brought to the table tremendous intellectual capability. He was a product of the best of academia--Yale, Oxford (as a Rhodes Scholar), and MIT (as a professor of economic history). But, Rostow also brought a strict, immovable ideology of anti-communism that was honed through his early years in academia and the McCarthy era, the Korean War, and the Eisenhower administration. He believed that capitalism would eclipse communism in the battle for economic supremacy, and that the ultimate defeat of the Soviet Union would begin from the successful battle for the third world, although not necessarily in a direct confrontation between the two powers. Rostow's 1960 book, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto, was to him a complete refutation of Marxian ideology. In it, he stated that underdeveloped nations needed significant assistance from the United States to reach a prosperous and effective capitalist democracy. That assistance could come in the economic form, as well as the diplomatic and military form. The emphasis, however, was on economic aid. After Kennedy's assassination, and Johnson's ascendency to the presidency, Rostow became increasingly influential in national security policymaking, particularly in decisions about the Vietnam War.

Milne leaves the reader with the distinct impression that Rostow not only had far too much influence on West Wing decisions, but that the influence he exerted came from beliefs about how the United States should interact with the Cold War world that were far from a consensus ideology. As "the most hawkish civilian member of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations," Rostow was the first to advise Kennedy to send U.S. combat troops to South Vietnam, and the first to recommend the bombing of North Vietnam (p. 6). This was but one example put forth by Milne of Rostow as a man full of contradictions. His work outside of government before becoming a member of Kennedy’s national security team argued that the United States needed to assist developing nations economically, not militarily, and that this was the best path to eventual democracy and alliance with the United States. To this end, Kennedy formed two large-scale aid programs which were in line with the Rostowian ideology of American assistance to developing nations, the Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Alliance for Progress (directed at Latin America). Yet,over time, he became the framer of the largest American military escalation in a developing country (Vietnam) which the United States hoped to bring to its side in the Cold War. To Rostow, if a country (or part of one in Vietnam's case) was communist, then that country would be shown no mercy if it engaged the U.S. militarily. He believed that eliminating the enemy's capability to wage war by destroying factories, power plants, and logistical networks was the best avenue to victory. Thus, he championed massive escalatory strategic bombing of North Vietnam, much like the bombing of the Axis powers in World War II, to bring quicker resolution to the conflict. In Kennedy, Rostow did not have a president who would fully unleash the American arsenal on its enemies, but in Johnson, he had a president who put most all options on the table, and who ultimately endorsed Rostow's strategy. In order to get that accomplished, Milne states that because of his ability to persuade as well as his extreme confidence in himself and his beliefs, Rostow had Johnson’s ear. Rostow said what Johnson wanted to hear, and said it at the right time. According to the author, Rostow's two biggest contributions to the war in Vietnam, were: first, that he persuaded LBJ to implement, and then continue, the graduated bombing of North Vietnam; and second, that he advised LBJ against pursuing a compromise peace with North Vietnam, thus extending the war's duration

Milne gives the reader a good view of Rostow's strengths (his intelligence, persuasiveness, and governmental experience) and weaknesses (his overconfidence and refusal to compromise). Rostow's unwavering belief in his own polemics and his incredible overconfidence, coupled with his refusal to modify his ideas based on alternative perspectives, were, in Milne's estimation, not just self-deluding, but reckless at best, and outright dangerous at worst. Milne skillfully demonstrates that Rostow had very little understanding of Southeast Asian political or cultural history, and was analytically deficient in perceiving the conflict as a nationalist civil war first, and a war between communism and a fledgling democracy second. The fact that Rostow could consistently convince LBJ to follow a certain policy path, when others could not, made Rostow one of the most important individuals associated with the Vietnam War and the ultimate American defeat. His influence and contribution, the author believes, was easily as important as that of McGeorge Bundy, Robert McNamara, or Dean Rusk. As for being "America's Rasputin," Milne ultimately finds that Harriman's view on Rostow was correct, that his advice was an overwhelmingly negative factor in American foreign policy decisions concerning Vietnam between 1960 and 1969. However, one also has to fault LBJ for allowing a person with Rostow's personality to have so much sway in policy making. By the same token, Milne contends in chapter 6 that LBJ appointed Rostow as national security advisor in 1966 partly because he wanted to send an unambiguous message, both at home and abroad, that a harder American military approach was necessary in Vietnam, and that the United States intended to win in Southeast Asia

Milne's prose is very readable, and absent of jargon. He takes what could be a complicated subject, and presents it clearly. The work is well documented; Milne's 33 pages of notes complement 256 pages of text. The notes are divided equally between primary sources (mainly personal papers from the JFK and LBJ Presidential Libraries) and secondary sources (primarily monographs and memoirs written by the key players in Washington). One of the notable strengths of the work is the author's use of no fewer than thirty-one oral history interviews conducted with a variety of people who had access to, or knew Rostow. Milne's bibliography is thorough, and demonstrates a good knowledge of the existing literature on Rostow, Washington, and American foreign policy in the 1960s, as well as the important individuals who made, or influenced, American policy in Southeast Asia. America's Rasputin belongs on the shelf of all university libraries, as well as any scholar or instructor of the period, especially those who teach the Vietnam War.

If there is additional discussion of this review, you may access it through the list discussion logs at: http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl.The above author compares that warmonger to Wolfowitz exposing another similarity to the illegal warpath we are still on...

Milne, David (2010) America's Intellectual Diplomacy. International Affairs, 86(1).Milne, David (2009) Wilson Agonistes: The Battle for Woodrow Wilson. The Nation.Milne, David (2008) Which Hotshots Will Head to DC? Los Angeles Times.Milne, David (2007) Intellectualism in American Diplomacy: Paul Wolfowitz and his Predecessors. International Journal.Milne, David (2007) The Paul Wolfowitz of the 1960s. Los Angeles Times.Milne, David (2007) The Peculiar Career of Walt Whitman Rostow. Vietnam Magazine.Milne, David (2007) Our Equivalent of Guerrilla Warfare: Walt Rostow and the Bombing of North Vietnam, 1961-1968. Journal of Military History, 71.

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All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately

According to the author, Rostow's two biggest contributions to the war in Vietnam, were: first, he persuaded LBJ to continue the graduated bombing of North Vietnam; and second, that he advised LBJ against pursuing a compromise peace with North Vietnam, extending the war's duration

A 1996 article in the New York Times said that the Pentagon Papers "demonstrated, among other things, that the Johnson Administration had systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress, about a subject of transcendent national interest and significance...In February 1971 Ellsberg discussed the study with New York Times reporter Neil Sheehan, and gave 43 of the volumes to him in March. The Times began publishing excerpts on June 13, 1971; the first article in the series was titled "Vietnam Archive: Pentagon Study Traces Three Decades of Growing US Involvement". The name "Pentagon Papers" for the study arose during the resulting media publicity.[3][4] Street protests, political controversy and lawsuits followed....The Papers revealed that the U.S. had deliberately expanded its war with bombing of Cambodia and Laos, coastal raids on North Vietnam, and Marine Corps attacks, none of which had been reported by media in the US.[7]

The most damaging revelations in the papers revealed that four administrations, from Truman to Johnson, had misled the public regarding their intentions. For example, the John F. Kennedy administration had planned to overthrow South Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem before his death in a November 1963 coup. President Johnson had decided to expand the war while promising "we seek no wider war" during his 1964 presidential campaign,[3] including plans to bomb North Vietnam well before the 1964 Election. President Johnson had been outspoken against doing so during the election and claimed that his opponent Barry Goldwater was the one that wanted to bomb North Vietnam.[8]

There is good news and bad news about the report that the Obama administration authorized CIA teams to go into Libya to liaise with the Libyan opposition before instituting a no-fly zone over that country. (The phrase “sneakers on the ground” has emerged in response to the administration’s firm insistence that there are no US boots on the ground there.)...http://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2011/03/31/sneakers-on-the-ground/Published: March 31, 2011 at 2:30am The New York TimesU.S. AGENTS ARE IN LIBYA, AIDING STRIKES AND MEETING REBELSBy MARK MAZZETTI and ERIC SCHMITTPublished: March 30, 2011

WASHINGTON — The Central Intelligence Agency has inserted clandestine operatives into Libya to gather intelligence for military airstrikes and contact rebels battling Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces, according to American officials.

While President Obama has insisted that no American military ground troops participate in the Libyan campaign, small groups of C.I.A. operatives have been working in Libya for several weeks as part of a shadow force of Westerners that the Obama administration hopes can help bleed Colonel Qaddafi’s military, the officials said.

In addition to the C.I.A. presence, composed of an unknown number of Americans who had worked at the spy agency’s station in Tripoli and others who arrived more recently, current and former British officials said that dozens of British special forces and MI6 intelligence officers are working inside Libya. The British operatives have been directing airstrikes from British jets and gathering intelligence about the whereabouts of Libyan government tank columns, artillery pieces and missile installations, the officials said.

United States officials hope that similar information gathered by American intelligence officers — from the location of Colonel Qaddafi’s munitions depots to the clusters of government troops inside towns — might help weaken Libya’s military enough to encourage defections within its ranks.

In addition, the American spies are meeting with rebels to try to fill in gaps in understanding who their leaders are and the allegiances of the groups opposed to Colonel Qaddafi, according to United States government officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the classified nature of the activities. American officials cautioned, though, that the Western operatives ...

NEW YORK — More than half a century after he died in the flaming crash of a CIA-owned cargo plane and became one of the first two Americans to die in combat in Vietnam, a legendary soldier of fortune known as “Earthquake McGoon” is finally coming home.

The skeletal remains of James B. McGovern Jr., discovered in an unmarked grave in remote northern Laos in 2002, were positively identified on Sept. 11 by laboratory experts at the U.S. military’s Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command in Hawaii...Six feet and 260 pounds — huge for a fighter pilot — McGovern carved out a flying career during and after World War II that made him a legend in Asia. An American saloon owner in China dubbed him “Earthquake McGoon,” after a hulking hillbilly character in the comic strip “Li’l Abner.”

He died on May 6, 1954, when his C-119 Flying Boxcar cargo plane was hit by ground fire while parachuting a howitzer to the besieged French garrison at Dien Bien Phu. “Looks like this is it, son,” McGovern radioed another pilot as his crippled plane staggered 75 miles into Laos, where it cartwheeled into a hillside.

Killed along with “McGoon,” 31, were his co-pilot, Wallace Buford, 28, and a French crew chief. Two cargo handlers, a Frenchman and a Thai, were thrown clear and survived....

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Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty: For he maketh sore, and bindeth up: he woundeth, and his hands make whole ; He shall deliver thee in six troubles: yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee. - Job 5

Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty: For he maketh sore, and bindeth up: he woundeth, and his hands make whole ; He shall deliver thee in six troubles: yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee. - Job 5

The Total number of Chinese troops in North Vietnam between 1965 and March 1973 amounted to over 320,000. 1967 was the peak year when 170,000 Chinese soldiers were present.

http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/l/lind-vietnam.htmlVietnam The Necessary War: A Reinterpretation of America's Most Disastrous Military Conflict By MICHAEL LIND...The Vietnam War was a proxy war between the United States, the Soviet Union — then growing rapidly in military power, confidence, and prestige — and communist China. Despite their rivalry for leadership of the communist bloc of nations, the Soviets and the Chinese collaborated to support North Vietnam's effort to destroy South Vietnam, to promote communist revolutions in Indochina and, if possible, Thailand, and to humiliate the United States.

.... In the 1960s, North Vietnam was protected from an American invasion, and equipped with state-of-the-art weapons and air defenses, by the Soviet Union and China, the latter of which sent hundreds of thousands of troops to support Ho Chi Minh's war effort between 1965 and 1968.

By the late 1970s, the Vietnamese communists, after annexing South Vietnam, occupying Cambodia, and breaking with and defeating China in a border war, possessed the third largest army in the world and ruled the most important satellite region of the Soviet empire outside Eastern Europe.

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Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty: For he maketh sore, and bindeth up: he woundeth, and his hands make whole ; He shall deliver thee in six troubles: yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee. - Job 5

He was the classic soldier of fortune - an ex-World War II fighter ace with nine enemy aircraft to his credit, a hard-living, 260-pound bon vivant, known in Asia's bars and byways as "Earthquake McGoon," after a character in the "Li'l Abner" comic strip.

Now, 48 years after his cargo plane was shot down during a desperate, last-ditch supply mission over Dien Bien Phu, a U.S. military team is seeking to recover the bodies of James B. McGovern, alias "McGoon," and his copilot, Wallace A. Buford.

Between 1945 and 1959 other Americans died in the fight against communism in Indochina, though some were only recently recognized as combat deaths. On May 6, 1954, James B. McGovern and his co-pilot, Wallace A. Buford, went down in southern Laos with their Fairchild C-119 "Flying Boxcar" after the aircraft was hit by groundfire over northern Vietnam.

McGovern, a World War II fighter ace, had served in the Fourteenth Air Force in China under the leadership of the legendary Major General Claire Chennault, the founder of the Flying Tigers. At the end of the war, Chennault retired from the Army Air Forces and remained in China. He founded a civilian airline known as Civil Air Transport (CAT), which supported Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government during the Chinese Civil War. When Chiang and his government evacuated the mainland for Taiwan in 1949, they were mostly airlifted out by CAT.

Many of CAT's pilots had flown for Chennault during World War II, including McGovern - a larger-than-life figure who weighed in at 260 pounds and preferred the roomier cockpit of the C-119 over the more cramped fighters. Hard-living and hard-drinking, he was nicknamed "Earthquake McGoon" after a character in the popular comic strip Li'l Abner. Once during the Chinese Civil War, McGovern ran out of fuel, made an emergency night landing on a dry riverbed and was captured by Chinese Communist forces. Six months later he returned to CAT, having talked his way out of captivity.

On the day McGovern and Buford were shot down, the two, along with their French flight engineer and two cargo handlers - a Frenchman and a Thai - had been attempting to deliver an artillery piece rigged for airdrop to the beleaguered French garrison at Dien Bien Phu, when they took multiple hits from anti-aircraft rounds. With one engine on fire, McGovern turned toward Laos, shadowed by another CAT C-119. After covering 75 miles and approaching 4,000-foot mountains, he radioed the trailing pilot for help in finding level ground to land. After a last radio transmission, his C-119 plowed into a Laotian hillside. The two pilots and the flight engineer were killed instantly, but the two cargo handlers were thrown clear...

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Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty: For he maketh sore, and bindeth up: he woundeth, and his hands make whole ; He shall deliver thee in six troubles: yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee. - Job 5

Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty: For he maketh sore, and bindeth up: he woundeth, and his hands make whole ; He shall deliver thee in six troubles: yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee. - Job 5

In anticipation of Jane Fonda's commencement speech on June 13 at UCLA's school of Theater, Film and Television, posters by street artist Sabo depicting the actress-turned-activist as "Hanoi Jane" have started appearing around Westwood and surrounding areas.

The name "Hanoi Jane" refers to the Vietnam War, in which Jane Fonda denounced American soldiers as "war criminals." The actress was notoriously photographed astride an anti-aircraft battery, wearing the helmet of a North Vietnamese soldier.

The posters incorporate a mugshot of Fonda for an arrest in 1970. The art reads "June 13th We Wish American Bombers Would Fly Over UCLA" and then to the right of Fonda's image are the words "Hanoi Jane Commencement Speaker."

Sabo is the same artist who created posters of Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in March of this year.

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Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty: For he maketh sore, and bindeth up: he woundeth, and his hands make whole ; He shall deliver thee in six troubles: yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee. - Job 5

“I’m very disappointed in Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) because the vets are horribly treated in this country,” Trump told ABC This Week‘s Marta Raddatz on Sunday. “I’m fighting for the vets, I’ve done a lot for the vets.”,...

John McCain, who has risen to political prominence on his image as a Vietnam POW war hero, has, inexplicably, worked very hard to hide from the public stunning information about American prisoners in Vietnam who, unlike him, didn’t return home. Throughout his Senate career, McCain has quietly sponsored and pushed into federal law a set of prohibitions that keep the most revealing information about these men buried as classified documents. Thus the war hero who people would logically imagine as a determined crusader for the interests of POWs and their families became instead the strange champion of hiding the evidence and closing the books.

Almost as striking is the manner in which the mainstream press has shied from reporting the POW story and McCain’s role in it, even as the Republican Party has made McCain’s military service the focus of his presidential campaign. Reporters who had covered the Vietnam War turned their heads and walked in other directions. McCain doesn’t talk about the missing men, and the press never asks him about them.

The sum of the secrets McCain has sought to hide is not small. There exists a telling mass of official documents, radio intercepts, witness depositions, satellite photos of rescue symbols that pilots were trained to use, electronic messages from the ground containing the individual code numbers given to airmen, a rescue mission by a special forces unit that was aborted twice by Washington—and even sworn testimony by two Defense secretaries that “men were left behind.” This imposing body of evidence suggests that a large number—the documents indicate probably hundreds—of the U.S. prisoners held by Vietnam were not returned when the peace treaty was signed in January 1973 and Hanoi released 591 men, among them Navy combat pilot John S. McCain

...Included in the evidence that McCain and his government allies suppressed or sought to discredit is a transcript of a senior North Vietnamese general’s briefing of the Hanoi politburo, discovered in Soviet archives by an American scholar in 1993. The briefing took place only four months before the 1973 peace accords. The general, Tran Van Quang, told the politburo members that Hanoi was holding 1,205 American prisoners but would keep many of them at war’s end as leverage to ensure getting war reparations from Washington....

McCain’s Role

An early and critical McCain secrecy move involved 1990 legislation that started in the House of Representatives. A brief and simple document, it was called “the Truth Bill” and would have compelled complete transparency about prisoners and missing men. Its core sentence reads: “[The] head of each department or agency which holds or receives any records and information, including live-sighting reports, which have been correlated or possibly correlated to United States personnel listed as prisoner of war or missing in action from World War II, the Korean conflict and the Vietnam conflict, shall make available to the public all such records held or received by that department or agency.”

/....

Some of McCain’s fellow captives at Hoa Lo prison in Hanoi didn’t share his views about prisoners left behind. Before he died of leukemia in 1999, retired Col. Ted Guy, a highly admired POW and one of the most dogged resisters in the camps, wrote an angry open letter to the senator in an MIA newsletter—a response to McCain’s stream of insults hurled at MIA activists. Guy wrote, “John, does this [the insults] include Senator Bob Smith [a New Hampshire Republican and activist on POW issues] and other concerned elected officials? Does this include the families of the missing where there is overwhelming evidence that their loved ones were ‘last known alive’? Does this include some of your fellow POWs?”

It’s not clear whether the taped confession McCain gave to his captors to avoid further torture has played a role in his postwar behavior in the Senate. That confession was played endlessly over the prison loudspeaker system at Hoa Lo—to try to break down other prisoners—and was broadcast over Hanoi’s state radio. Reportedly, he confessed to being a war criminal who had bombed civilian targets. The Pentagon has a copy of the confession but will not release it. Also, no outsider I know of has ever seen a non-redacted copy of the debriefing of McCain when he returned from captivity, which is classified but could be made public by McCain....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_USS_Forrestal_fireThe 1967 USS Forrestal fire was a devastating fire and series of chain-reaction explosions on 29 July 1967 that killed 134 sailors and injured 161 on the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal (CVA-59), after an electrical anomaly discharged a Zuni rocket on the flight deck. Forrestal was engaged in combat operations in the Gulf of Tonkin during the Vietnam War at the time, and the damage exceeded US$72 million (equivalent to $504 million today) not including damage to aircraft.[2][3] Future United States Senator John McCain was among the survivors....

At about 10:50 (local time) on 29 July, while preparations for the second strike of the day were being made, an unguided 5.0 in (127.0 mm) Mk-32 "Zuni" rocket, one of four contained in a LAU-10 underwing rocket pod mounted on an F-4B Phantom II, was accidentally fired due to an electrical power surge during the switch from external power to internal power. The surge originated from the fact that high winds had blown free the safety pin, which would have prevented the fail surge, as well as a decision to plug in the "pigtail" system early to increase the number of takeoffs from the carrier (see below).

The rocket flew across the flight deck, striking a wing-mounted external fuel tank on an A-4E Skyhawk awaiting launch,[1] aircraft No. 405, piloted by Lieutenant Commander Fred D. White.[2][10] The Zuni Rocket's warhead safety mechanism prevented it from detonating, but the impact tore the tank off the wing and ignited the resulting spray of escaping JP-5 fuel, causing an instantaneous conflagration. Within seconds, other external fuel tanks on White's aircraft overheated and ruptured, releasing more jet fuel to feed the flames, which began spreading along the flight deck.

The impact of the Zuni had also dislodged two of the 1000-lb AN-M65 bombs, which fell to the deck and lay in the pool of burning fuel between White and McCain's aircraft. Damage Control Team #8 swung into action immediately, and Chief Gerald Farrier, recognizing the risk and without benefit of protective clothing, immediately smothered the bombs with a PKP fire extinguisher in an effort to knock down the fuel fire long enough to allow the pilots to escape. The pilots, still strapped into their aircraft, were immediately aware that a disaster was unfolding, but only some were able to escape in time. Lieutenant Commander John McCain, pilot of A-4 Skyhawk side No. 416 next to White's was among the first to notice the flames and escaped by scrambling down the nose of his A-4 and jumping off the refueling probe shortly before the explosions began.

Damage Control Team #8 had been assured of a 10 minute window in which to extinguish the fire and prevent the bombs from detonating, but the Composition B bombs proved to be just as unstable as the ordnance crews had initially feared; after only slightly more than 1 minute, despite Chief Farrier's constant efforts to cool the bombs, the casing of one suddenly split open and began to glow cherry red. The chief, recognizing a lethal cook-off was imminent, shouted for his team to withdraw, but the bomb detonated seconds later – a mere one minute and 36 seconds after the start of the fire.[11]

The detonation destroyed White and McCain's aircraft (along with their remaining fuel and armament), blew a crater in the armored flight deck, and sprayed the deck and crew with bomb fragments and burning fuel. Damage Control Team #8 took the brunt of the initial blast; Chief Farrier and all his men except three were killed instantly, with the survivors being critically injured. Lieutenant Commander White had managed to escape his burning aircraft but was unable to get far enough away in time; he was killed along with the firefighters in the first bomb explosion. In the tightly packed formation on the deck, the two nearest A-4s to White and McCain's (both fully fueled and bomb-laden) were heavily damaged and began to burn, causing the fire to spread and more bombs to quickly cook off.

The first display of bonding occurred when Col. Bui Tin, a former senior colonel in the North Vietnamese Army who had actually interrogated McCain and other U.S. prisoners, testified before the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs.During a break in the hearing, McCain moved to where Col. Bui Tin was seated. Instead of grabbing Bui Tin by the neck and demanding his arrest for war crimes against U.S. POWs, McCain reached out and warmly hugged his former interrogator as if he were a long lost brother. Never mind that at least 55 American POW were murdered by interrogators and guards while in North Vietnamese prisoner of war camps.

Mean spirited McCain is known for throwing temper tantrums, flying off the handle, blowing his top,seething with anger, accusing others of lying, and of mistreating POW/MIA family members. So how will he treat U.S.? POW/MIA families report...You decide

The sum of the secrets McCain has sought to hide is not small. There exists a telling mass of official documents, radio intercepts, witness depositions, satellite photos of rescue symbols that pilots were trained to use, electronic messages from the ground containing the individual code numbers given to airmen, a rescue mission by a special forces unit that was aborted twice by Washington—and even sworn testimony by two Defense secretaries that “men were left behind.” This imposing body of evidence suggests that a large number—the documents indicate probably hundreds—of the U.S. prisoners held by Vietnam were not returned when the peace treaty was signed in January 1973 and Hanoi released 591 men, among them Navy combat pilot John S. McCain.

Mass of Evidence

The Pentagon had been withholding significant information from POW families for years. What’s more, the Pentagon’s POW/MIA operation had been publicly shamed by internal whistleblowers and POW families for holding back documents as part of a policy of “debunking” POW intelligence even when the information was obviously credible.

The pressure from the families and Vietnam veterans finally forced the creation, in late 1991, of a Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs. The chairman was John Kerry. McCain, as a former POW, was its most pivotal member. In the end, the committee became part of the debunking machine.

One of the sharpest critics of the Pentagon’s performance was an insider, Air Force Lt. Gen. Eugene Tighe, who headed the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) during the 1970s. He openly challenged the Pentagon’s position that no live prisoners existed, saying that the evidence proved otherwise. McCain was a bitter opponent of Tighe, who was eventually pushed into retirement.

Included in the evidence that McCain and his government allies suppressed or sought to discredit is a transcript of a senior North Vietnamese general’s briefing of the Hanoi politburo, discovered in Soviet archives by an American scholar in 1993. The briefing took place only four months before the 1973 peace accords. The general, Tran Van Quang, told the politburo members that Hanoi was holding 1,205 American prisoners but would keep many of them at war’s end as leverage to ensure getting war reparations from Washington.

see also:http://www.vvof.org/mccain_hides.htmThe War Secrets Sen. John McCain HidesFormer POW Fights Public Access to POW/MIA FilesBy Sydney Schanberg...Knowledgeable observers note that it’s quite possible that Nixon, leading the country’s withdrawal, accepted the peace treaty of Jan. 27, 1973, while telling himself that somehow he would negotiate the release of the remaining POWs later. But when Congress refused to provide the $3 billion to $4 billion in proposed national development reparations that National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger had dangled as a carrot to Hanoi , the prospects for the abandoned men began to unravel.

Observers also point out that over the years that followed, Washington continued to reject paying what it branded as ransom money and so, across six presidencies, including the present one, the issue of POWs who may have been left behind remained unacknowledged by the White House and the Pentagon. Hanoi refused to correct the impression that all the prisoners had been returned, and Washington, for its part, refused to admit that it had known about abandoned POWs from the beginning....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfyGdG9llSEUploaded on May 8, 2008 Col. Bud Day, POW cellmate of Sen. John McCain in Vietnam, speaks out on the character and heroism of the man who must be elected the next President of the United States.

November of 1991, when Tracy Usry, the former chief investigator of the Minority Staff of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, testified before the Select Committee, he revealed that the Soviets interrogated U.S. prisoners of war in Vietnam. Sen. McCain became outraged interrupting Usry several times, arguing that "none of the returned U.S. prisoners of war released by Vietnam were ever interrogated by the Soviets." However, this was simply not true and Sen. McCain knows that from firsthand experience.

Col. Bui Tin, a former Senior Colonel in the North Vietnamese Army, testified on the same day, but after Usry, that because of his high position in the Communist Party during the war, he had the authority to "read all documents and secret telegrams from the politburo" pertaining to American prisoners of war. He said that not only did the Soviets interrogate some American prisoners of war, but that they treated the Americans very badly.

Bui Tin, who indicated he favored a normalization of relations between the U.S. and Vietnam, also offered the committee his records concerning his personal interrogations of American POWs.

Sen. McCain stunned onlookers at the hearing when he moved forward to the witness table and warmly embraced Bui Tin as if he was a long, lost brother.

In any case, many of McCain's fellow Vietnam War POWs were aghast, not to mention former POWs of World War II and Korea, who could, only in some instances after decades, forgive but never forget the inhumanity of their captors--certainly not to the point of embracing them.

Shortly thereafter, as a direct result of Sen. McCain's lobbying of other Republican Senators, Usry, a distinguished Vietnam veteran, and all other members of the Minority Staff, who had participated in the POW/MIA investigations, were abruptly fired.

If the Senate Select Committee finds it pertinent to investigate alleged instances of "fraud" by POW/MIA activists, then certainly, by even the most liberal standards, the charge of collaboration with the enemy by a "high-ranking naval" officer should be investigated just as seriously as were the charges against Marine Private Robert Garwood, the only American POW charged and convicted of this crime.

THE ADMIRAL'S SON

John McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone on August 29, 1936. His father was Admiral John McCain II, who became commander-in-chief of the Pacific forces in 1968. Admiral McCain later ordered the bombing of Hanoi while his son was in prison. His grandfather was Admiral John S. McCain, Sr., the famous commander of aircraft carriers in the Pacific under Admiral William F. Halsey in World War II

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Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty: For he maketh sore, and bindeth up: he woundeth, and his hands make whole ; He shall deliver thee in six troubles: yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee. - Job 5

Thanks I do my best ,,, the truth about the American wars (Vietnam especially) are literally classified forever...

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Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty: For he maketh sore, and bindeth up: he woundeth, and his hands make whole ; He shall deliver thee in six troubles: yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee. - Job 5

In 1992, McCain sparred with Dolores Alfond, the chairwoman of the National Alliance of Families for the Return of America's Missing Servicemen and Women, calling her a liar and forcing her to near tears during a Committee hearing on POW issues.

Included in the evidence that McCain and his government allies suppressed or sought to discredit is a transcript of a senior North Vietnamese general’s briefing of the Hanoi politburo, discovered in Soviet archives by an American scholar in 1993. The briefing took place only four months before the 1973 peace accords. The general, Tran Van Quang, told the politburo members that Hanoi was holding 1,205 American prisoners but would keep many of them at war’s end as leverage to ensure getting war reparations from Washington....

Dolores Apodaca Alfond was the Chairperson and a founding member of the National Alliance of Families for the Return of POWs and MIAs. She passed away peacefully on December 2nd.

Dolores came to the POW/MIA issue the day her brother Victor was shot down over North Vietnam, on June 8th, 1967. After the Vietnam War, she worked on her brother's behalf. Her efforts went public, joining other POW/MIA families forming the National Alliance of Families. In what can only be described as an uphill battle, Dolores made the Alliance a respected and honest advocate for our missing service men, women and their families. She dedicated her life to our unaccounted for POWs and MIAs. She worked tirelessly, feeding stories to the media, working the phones, writing letters, walking the halls of Congress and testifying before various Congressional Committees. She made it her life's work to bring the issue of our POWs and MIAs to the public and hold Washington accountable for their return....her brother Richard (October 25, 1963) and Major Victor Joe Apodaca Jr., US Air Force, Missing in Action June 8, 1967, North Vietnam ...

Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty: For he maketh sore, and bindeth up: he woundeth, and his hands make whole ; He shall deliver thee in six troubles: yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee. - Job 5

Last week the U.S. Dept. of Justice, at U.S. taxpayer expense, transported a Lieutenant Colonel of Fidel Castro’s KGB-trained secret police named Roberto Hernandez-Caballero to a U.S. courtroom.

The U.S. State Dept. classifies Cuba as a “State Sponsor of Terrorism,” and Fidel Castro classifies the U.S. as “the Great Enemy of Mankind!” A former regime-colleague of Hernandez-Caballero sits in a U.S. federal prison after conviction in “the most damaging spy scandal against the U.S. since the end of the Cold War.” Her name is Ana Montes and she was convicted in a different U.S. courtroom of the same crimes as Ethel and Julius Rosenberg–but on behalf of Fidel Castro.

Other regime-colleagues of Senor Hernandez-Caballero named Elsa Montero, Jose Abad and Roberto Santiesteban were nabbed in the nick of time by J Edgar Hoover’s FBI and booted from the U.S. for plotting to detonate 500 kilos of TNT in Macy’s, Gimbel’s, Bloomingdale’s and Manhattan’s Grand Central Terminal on Black Friday 1962. Macy’s get’s 50,000 shoppers that one day. Fernando_carlos_vecino_alegret

Other regime-colleagues of Hernandez-Caballero, one named Fernando Vecino-Alegret, helped torture American POW’s to death in Hanoi. In 1967 Fidel Castro sent several of his regime's most promising sadists to North Vietnamese prison camps to instruct the Vietnamese reds in finer points of their profession. Testimony during Congressional hearings titled, "The Cuban Torture Program; Torture of American Prisoners by Cuban Agents" held on November 1999 provide some of the harrowing details.

The communists titled their torture program "the Cuba Project," and it took place during 67-68 primarily at the Cu Loc POW camp (also known as "The Zoo") on the southwestern edge of Hanoi. In brief, this "Cuba Project" was a Joseph Mengelese experiment run by Castroite Cubans to determine how much physical and psychological agony a human can endure before cracking. ...

For their experiment the Castroites chose twenty American POWs. One died: Lieutenant Colonel Earl Cobeil, an Air Force F-105 pilot. His death came slowly, in agonizing stages, under torture. Upon learning his Castroite Cuban affiliation, the American POWs nicknamed Cobeil's Cuban torturer, "Fidel."

"The difference between the Vietnamese and "Fidel' was that once the Vietnamese got what they wanted they let up, at least for a while,” testified fellow POW Captain Ray Vohden USN. “Not so with the Cubans. Earl Cobeil had resisted 'Fidel' to the maximum. I heard the thud of the belt falling on Cobeil's body again and again, as Fidel screamed "you son of a beech! I will show you! Kneel down!--KNEEL DOWN!” The Cubans unmercifully beat a mentally defenseless, sick American naval pilot to death."

"Earl Cobeil was a complete physical disaster when we saw him," testified another fellow POW, Col. Jack Bomar. "He had been tortured for days and days and days. His hands were almost severed from the manacles. He had bamboo in his shins. All kinds of welts up and down all over; his face was bloody. Then 'Fidel' began to beat him with a fan belt.”

According to the book Honor Bound the tortures of U.S. POWs by Castro’s agents (Hernandez-Caballero’s colleagues) were “the worst sieges of torture any American withstood in Hanoi.”

Until quite recently the chief Castroite torturer in North Vietnam, Fernando Vecino- Alegret, served as Cuba's "Minister of Education." So he’ll probably smilingly host many of those visiting delegations of smiling U.S. scholars and educators as a result of Obama’s recent promotion of “people-to-people” exchanges with Cuba.

Vecino-Alegret’s colleague Hernandez-Caballero, however, was not transported to a U.S. courtroom this week to defend himself against charges of being an official of a regime that murdered more political prisoners in its first three years in power than Hitler murdered in his first six, jailed political prisoners at a higher rate than Stalin, has sponsored terrorism for half a century, came closest to nuking the United States, and gratuitously tortured American POW’s.

Instead Mr Hernandez-Caballero is here to testify against Luis Posada Carriles, and thus try to help the U.S. Justice Dept. convict a one-time military colleague of the American’s tortured to death by his (Hernandez-Caballero’s) colleagues in North Vietnam. Fidel Castro considers Luis Posada Carriles his number one enemy in the world. Posada volunteered for the Bay of Pigs invasion, and later joined the U.S. army emerging as a 2nd Lieutenant. After retiring from the U.S. Army he worked for the CIA putting out Soviet-started fires throughout Latin America. Among other projects, Posada helped the Reagan team squash Communism in Nicaragua by helping arms and train the Nicaraguan Contras. A few years later in Guatemala a Castro appointed death-squad ambushed Posada, riddled him with bullets and left him crippled.

Hernandez Del Llano told jurors he was trained by the KGB in Moscow and served as a major in Cuba's counter-intelligence agency, but quit in 1992 after becoming disillusioned by government corruption. He said he was approached about resuming his old duties in 2002, but he refused.

In retaliation, he said, Roberto Hernandez Caballero -- an investigator for Cuba's Interior Ministry -- ordered him arrested three years later and then tortured him in a Havana jail. He later fled to the U.S...

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Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty: For he maketh sore, and bindeth up: he woundeth, and his hands make whole ; He shall deliver thee in six troubles: yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee. - Job 5

Ho Chi Minh was a dedicated communist,4 a member of the inner circle of the Soviet Comintern and a prot?g? of Dmitry Manuilsky, the right hand man of both Lenin and Stalin.5 His supposedly ragtag army of peasants was trained by the Mao?s Red Chinese Army6 and armed with modern weapons by the Red Chinese and Russians.7

After all this time, why do we still argue about the Vietnam War? About who Ho Chi Minh was? As William Duiker wrote,8 ?The question of Ho Chi Minh?s character and inner motivations lies at the heart of the debate in the United States over the morality of the conflict in Vietnam.?...When he returned to Vietnam as Ho Chi Minh 30 years later, the patriot was no more. In his place was a brutal murderer dedicated to spreading communism throughout Asia. Before he and his followers were done, millions of people were dead in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.11

As the man responsible for the spread of communism in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, Ho Chi Minh is directly and indirectly responsible for the lives of 1.7 million Cambodians,12 2 million Vietnamese and possibly 230,000 in Laos.13 These are not war dead, but people murdered, starved to death and ?reeducated? to death. In 1995 Vietnam revealed that they lost 1.1 million military dead14 during the war. As a percentage of their populations, Ho is responsible for as many deaths in Indochina as Mao Tse-tung was in China.

To grasp the enormity of the slaughter, one would have to execute more than 26 million Americans to equal the percentage of the populations slaughtered by Ho and his henchmen. Documenting these deaths is outside the scope of this article. I encourage readers to survey the literature themselves for the evidence.

Who was Ho Chi Minh? Ho Chi Minh was a chameleon. He was a master at appearing to be whatever his interlocutor of the moment was expecting or hoping for (or not expecting at all). On the inside, where it counted, he never changed after his conversion to communism. He was a devoted communist whose only goal was the worldwide victory of communism, especially in Indochina,15 no matter how many people he had to kill to achieve it....

AMONG the present generation of Communist leaders, so decimated by the Stalinist purge, Ho Chi Minh is one of the rare survivors of the Leninist International which he joined as an ardent nationalistic revolutionary. In our time, many Communist leaders are progressing in the other direction, going from doctrinaire Communism to their kind of National-Communism, a process of which, for the time being, Tito is still the most striking example. I met Ho Chi Minh, then called Nguyen Ai-Quoc, quite often in Moscow in the early twenties. He became popular quickly in Comintern circles with his pleasant, almost timid manners. But it was Ho Chi Minh's nationalism which impressed us European Communists born and bred in a rather gray kind of abstract internationalism.,,,The newly-founded Communist International was torn apart by the conflict between its local branches and the Moscow Executive Committee which was attempting to control the entire European Communist movement from one desk in the chairman's building in the Kremlin. One group after another rebelled against Moscow's numerous interventions in their parties' affairs; Ho Chi Minh watched these oppositions from the wings, often sympathizing with the anti-Moscow Communists but never joining in these factional feuds. His main interest was then, as it is today, the fight for the independence of his own country.

Ho Chi Minh went to Moscow for the first time in 1922 to attend the Fourth World Congress of the Communist International and became one of the most energetic organizers of its Southeast Asia bureau. In this capacity he had to c?ordinate his efforts with those of the French Communist Party of which Indo-Chinese, Algerian and other anti-colonial groups were still subdivisions....During the first spectacular advances of Chinese Communism, Moscow became the rallying point of many Asian revolutionaries; they came for help, for money, for passports, for military training and political schooling. Ho quietly and efficiently organized the schooling and training of his own Indo-Chinese cadres, and among his present collaborators there are still some who worked together with him then at Sun Yat-sen University.,,,It is perhaps necessary to repeat that the Japanese invasion of Manchuria must be considered one of the turning points in the history of Asian Communism. After 1931, when American foreign policy sought to restrain Japanese aggression, Asian Communists welcomed the growing tension between Washington and Tokyo as opportune for the pursuit of their own policies. That war between the United States and Japan was inevitable had been one of the major theses of the Comintern....Ho had a hard time bringing his organization safely through that French phase of the Comintern and the Trotskyites made inroads in his Party. Many leading Communists who disagreed with Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution and distrusted his activities in exile nevertheless trembled with disgust and fear when Stalin persecuted anyone who at one time or other had been in contact with Trotsky or Bukharin as being guilty by association. To break away from the Stalin Politburo, as Trotsky, in exile, demanded, was of course impracticable because the Communist leaders could not renounce the material support which only Moscow could give them nor could they keep their ranks together without the myth of monolithic Communism....The hour of opportunity struck for Ho only after Pearl Harbor. In the fall of 1941 Vichy had concluded a pact of mutual tolerance with Tokyo which granted the Japanese army free movement through certain Indo-Chinese ports and roads and permitted, in exchange, the local French administration to function. Ho could now develop fully his talents for conspiracy and diplomacy: he got in contact with Chiang Kai-shek in Chungking, with the British intelligence and the O.S.S. operating in the Pacific area. Ho Chi Minh got very little, if any, material assistance either from the Chinese, the British or the Americans, but he gained political prestige among his co-nationals by becoming, in a way, the ally of the Allies. He adapted his organization to the new setting: the Communist Party faded into the background and in its place arose a Popular Front which succeeded in drawing in many nationalistic groups springing up throughout Indo-China. In 1942, the League of Revolutionary Organizations of Vietnam was founded: Viet-Nam-Doc-Lap-Dong-Minh-Hoi, or Viet Minh for short....The French administration, functioning under Japanese jurisdiction, became of course quite insecure in its handling of Indo-Chinese nationalists and Communists. Ho could plant his men in the French as well as the Japanese camp and the Viet Minh agents moved quite freely throughout the country, being the only group in which the native population had confidence. This peculiar balance of conflicting forces was suddenly broken when the Japanese command, probably somewhat out of touch with Tokyo, decided (in March 1945) to seize Hanoi and liquidate the local French administration. Many French changed sides at this time and those who had collaborated with the Japanese for years went into the Maquis, partly to save themselves from Japanese persecution and partly to have a good record for the new De Gaulle government in Paris. Thus for a short time, until August 1945, Ho Chi Minh and the French fought together in an anti-Japanese Resistance....However, Ho Chi Minh's submission to the strategy of the Moscow-Peking axis which needed that compromise with France may not be the end of his own political story. Ho is of course a veteran Communist; he will of course head a party state striving for the maximum industrialization and finally for collectivization of agriculture. One can even describe Ho as the model of the disciplined Communist; he has proved time and again his profound loyalty to Communism. However, his subordination to Moscow's authority stemmed as much from a sober evaluation of his political alternatives (which in the past was practically none) as from his Marxist convictions. After Geneva, his status is considerably elevated; he will now take his seat in the highest councils of the Communist hierarchy, regardless of where the frontiers of the Indo-Chinese state are definitely established. Will he be nothing more than an echo to Chou En-lai or Molotov? In the answer to this question lies much of the answer to the future of Southeast Asia....

Ruth Fischer (11 December 1895 ? 13 March 1961) was an Austrian and German Communist and a co-founder of the Austrian Communist Party in 1918.

She later became a staunch anti-Communist activist and, according to secret information declassified in 2010, was a key agent of the American intelligence service known as "The Pond". ...In 1941, Fischer left France for the United States.[1]

In 1947, she testified before HUAC against her brothers Gerhart and Hanns. Her testimony against Hanns resulted in his blacklisting and deportation. She testified that Gerhart was an important Comintern agent.[1]

Communist press denounced her as a "German Trotskyite". She propounded critical views of Stalinism and called for a rebirth of Communism after Stalin's death. Before this period of anti-Stalinism, she had supported the rise to power of the Triumvirs (Stalin, Grigory Zinoviev, and Lev Kamenev), denouncing Trotsky at the fifth congress of the Communist International.[citation needed]

Isaac Deutscher, a biographer of Trotsky and Stalin, described her as a "young, trumpet-tongued woman, without any revolutionary experience or merit, yet idolized by the Communists of Berlin."[12]

In 1955, Fischer returned to Paris and published her books Stalin and German Communism and Die Umformung der Sowjetgesellschaft.

The PondFrom eight years after the second World War, Fischer, code-named "Alice Miller", was a key agent for "The Pond"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pond_(intelligence_organization)The Pond was a small, secret organization formed by the government of the United States of America which operated between 1942 and 1955.[1] It engaged in espionage. Its existence has only recently[when?] been acknowledged. ...In the spring of 1942, Brigadier General Hayes Kroner, the head of the War Department's Military Intelligence Service, was given the go-ahead to set up an espionage organization separate from William "Wild Bill" Donovan's Office of Strategic Services.[1] He selected to head it U.S. Army Captain John or Jean Grombach, who was a rival and previous employee of Donovan. [2] Grombach, the son of the French consul in New Orleans, had obtained American citizenship and graduated from West Point before World War II.

...On April 27, 2008, the Associated Press reported that the Central Intelligence Agency planned to "release a stash of Pond-related papers accidentally discovered in a Virginia barn in 2001" and hand them over to the National Archives at College Park, Maryland

It operated under the cover of multinational corporations, including American Express, Chase National Bank and Philips, the Dutch-based electronic giant. One of its top agents was a female American journalist....Now the world can finally get a deeper look at the long-hidden roots of American espionage as tens of thousands of once-secret documents found in locked safes and filing cabinets in a barn near Culpeper, Va., in 2001 have finally become public after a long security review by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The papers, which the Pond's leader tried to keep secret long after the organization was dissolved, were placed in the National Archives in College Park, Md., in 2008 but only opened to the public in April. Those records plus documents obtained by The Associated Press in the past two years from the FBI, CIA and other agencies under the Freedom of Information Act portray a sophisticated organization obsessed with secrecy that operated a network of 40 chief agents and more than 600 sources in 32 countries. The AP has also interviewed former officials, family members, historians and archivists.

The Pond, designed to be relatively small and operate out of the limelight, appeared to score some definite successes, but rivals questioned its sources and ultimately, it became discredited because its pugnacious leader was too cozy with Sen. Joseph McCarthy and other radical anti-communists.

The documents also highlight issues still relevant today: the rivalry among U.S. intelligence agencies that have grown to number 16, the government's questionable use of off-the-books operations with budgets hidden from congressional oversight, and the reliance on contractors to undertake sensitive national security work....The Pond, he wrote in a declassified document put in the National Archives, had a mission "to collect important secret intelligence via many international companies, societies, religious organizations and business and professional men who were willing to cooperate with the U.S. but who would not work with the OSS because it was necessarily integrated with British and French Intelligence and infiltrated by Communists and Russians."...The Pond laid the groundwork and devised a detailed postwar plan to integrate its activities into the U.S. Rubber Co.'s business operations in 93 countries. It is unknown if the plan was ever carried out. The Pond also worked with the American Express Co., Remington Rand, Inc. and Chase National Bank, according to documents at the National Archives.

American Express spokeswoman Caitlin Lowie said a search of company archives revealed no evidence of a relationship with Grombach's organization. Representatives of the other companies or their successors did not respond to requests for comment.

The Pond directed its resources for domestic political ends, as well.

In the 1950s, Grombach began furnishing names to McCarthy on supposed security risks in the U.S. intelligence community. By then, the Pond was a CIA contractor, existing as a quasi-private company, and the agency's leadership was enraged by Grombach's actions. It wasn't long before the Pond's contract was terminated and the organization largely ceased to exist....Henry A. Fischer, the council's executive director, said safes at the 683-acre Longea Estate ? site of the council's former Freedom Studies Center ? were mistakenly removed by contractors hired to transfer the contents of its Boston, Va., library. He said he had been told by staff of the error when FBI agents were called to examine them. "I have no idea what they were going to do with them."

FBI historian John Fox said only one safe was removed from the property by the contractors and drilled open, its contents turned over to the CIA, which informed the bureau about the discovery in December 2001. Fox said the FBI recovered four other safes from the council and took them to Quantico to be opened. After an investigation, Fox said the remaining documents were transferred to the CIA.

Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty: For he maketh sore, and bindeth up: he woundeth, and his hands make whole ; He shall deliver thee in six troubles: yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee. - Job 5

Ho Chi Min is copy of Mao Tse-tung. Same as Pol Pot and their Red Khmer . Murderers.But what is about US Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon . SOD McNamara, General William Westmoreland , South Vietnamese Dictator Dương Văn Minh